I was busy all of yesterday, then got to work and it was a mad rush, so here’s days 4 and 5 together!

Day 4 - A guilty pleasure book
Belle de Jour - Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl by Belle de Jour and Candy Girl - A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody. Both of these books are relatively similar in content so it’s hard to split them. I find the whole sex industry thing fascinating to read about, especially when entered into by choice as both these women did. Belle (whose book spawned the series, ‘Secret Diary of a Call Girl’, with Billie Piper) is a young woman struggling to pay her university fees and somehow ends up becoming a high-end call girl, going into the nitty-gritty of her clients’ sexual mores and life behind the glamorous facade. Diablo Cody (writer of ‘Juno’), on the other hand, stumbles upon a striptease competition at a club and becomes hooked, taking a year out to become a stripper and see exactly what goes on behind closed doors. I really enjoyed both of these books - they were well-written, interesting and definitely worth checking out if you enjoy semi-autobiographies with strange situations.

Day 5 - A book that makes you happy
The Yellow Peril From Sin City by Hung Le. While possibly a ‘children’s book’, it’s a simply hilarious account of Hung Le, a Vietnamese immigrant who came to Australia as a young child with his family. Le was a very popular comedian in Australian in the early 90’s, seen alongside Nick ‘Wog Boy’ Giannopoulous and frequenting the Enmore Theatre in Newtown (behind which I lived at the time I first read this book). His way of describing his childhood and putting cultural differences into context, while peppering them with hilarious anecdotes makes this one book I can re-read over and over. As a preview of what to expect, here’s a quote from his book: “We had to hurry, so we packed our bags and fed the dog…to granny.”